Is sticky blood bad for the Brain? Hemostatic and inflammatory systems and dementia in the Caerphilly prospective study

Objective— Hemostasis and inflammation have been implicated in dementia. This study investigates the role of specific hemostatic and inflammatory pathways with incident vascular and nonvascular dementia.Methods and Results— This was a prospective study of a population sample of men aged 65 to 84 years, with baseline assessment of hemostatic and inflammatory factors and cognition measured 17 years later. The sample included 865 men (59 had dementia and 112 had cognitive impairment, not dementia), free of vascular disease at baseline and for whom hemostatic and inflammatory marker data were available and cognitive status was known. A total of 15 hemostatic and 6 inflammatory markers were assessed. Factor analysis was used to identify hemostatic subsystems. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke–Association Internationale pour la Recherche et l’Enseignement en Neurologie criteria were used to identify vascular dementia. By using standardized (z) scores for hemostatic and inflammatory markers, and after adjustment for age and risk factors, vascular dementia was associated with fibrinogen (hazard ratio [HR], 1.68; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02–2.76), factor VIII (HR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.09–3.00), and plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (HR, 3.13; 95% CI, 1.73–5.70). For vascular dementia, the HR risk from high levels of all three hemostatic variables (fibrinogen, factor VIII, and plasminogen activator inhibitor 1) was 2.97 (P<0.001). Inflammatory factors were not associated with vascular dementia.Conclusion— The associations of these hemostatic markers with vascular dementia may implicate clot formation as the primary mechanism and are consistent with a microinfarct model of vascular dementia

A Plasma Reactor for the Synthesis of High-Temperature Materials: Electro Thermal, Processing and Service Life Characteristics

The three-jet direct-flow plasma reactor with a channel diameter of 0.054 m was studied in terms of service life, thermal, technical, and functional capabilities. It was established that the near-optimal combination of thermal efficiency, required specific enthalpy of the plasma-forming gas and its mass flow rate is achieved at a reactor power of 150 kW. The bulk temperature of plasma flow over the rector of 12 gauges long varies within 5500±3200 K and the wall temperature within 1900±850 K, when a cylinder from zirconium dioxide of 0.005 m thick is used to thermally insulate the reactor. The specific electric power reaches a high of 1214 MW/m{3}. The rated service life of electrodes is 4700 hours for a copper anode and 111 hours for a tungsten cathode. The projected contamination of carbides and borides with elec-trode-erosion products doesn't exceed 0.0001% of copper and 0.00002% of tungsten

Peak positions and shapes in neutron pair correlation functions from powders of highly anisotropic crystals

The effect of the powder average on the peak shapes and positions in neutron pair distribution functions of polycrystalline materials is examined. It is shown that for highly anisotropic crystals, the powder average leads to shifts in peak positions and to non-Gaussian peak shapes. The peak shifts can be as large as several percent of the lattice spacing

Activation regions in a yeast transposon have homology to mating type control sequences and to mammalian enhancers.

The DNA sequence of the Ty1 activating region from the CYC7-H2 mutant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is presented. Analysis of the data revealed the presence of four simian virus 40-type enhancer core sequences. Two of the Ty1 enhancer cores are contiguous with sequences also homologous to the diploid control site at MAT alpha. We postulate that these two Ty1 regions of approximately equal to 30 base pairs are regulatory blocks, and we have analyzed deletions to ascertain whether they are necessary for effects of Ty1 on adjacent gene expression. We found that activation is lost when a restriction fragment encompassing both postulated regulatory blocks is deleted. Deletion of restriction fragments that remove only one of the two regulatory blocks has little or no effect on Ty1 activating ability in haploid yeast cells or on repression of this function in diploid yeast cells. Because the most significant internal homologies in the restriction fragments analyzed are the putative regulatory blocks, these observations suggest that enhancer-like sequences are involved in cell-type control of Ty1 effects on gene expression

Livestock guarding dogs enable human-carnivore coexistence: first evidence of equivalent carnivore occupancy on guarded and unguarded farms

Livestock guarding dogs (LGDs) are advocated to reduce livestock depredation on agricultural lands. However, LGDs have been proposed as excluding carnivores from guarded farms; this study is the first to test this hypothesis in an African ecosystem. We investigated carnivore occupancy (black-backed jackal, leopard and brown hyaena) from 1029 camera-trap days (126 camera locations) in relation to the presence of LGDs and a range of habitat and land-use covariates across eight South African farms, five of which utilised an LGD. Models containing LGDs had little support in explaining leopard or black backed jackal occupancy, although LGD presence had a positive relationship with brown hyaena occupancy (β = 1.14, 95% CI = 0.05, 2.23). Leopard detection was positively related to the presence of black-backed jackals (β = 1.47, 95% CI = 0.18, 2.74) and sheep (β = 1.13, 95% CI = 0.14, 2.12), whilst black-backed jackal detection was negatively related to lures (β = -1.33, 95% CI = -2.00, -0.65) and positively related to the presence of brown hyaena (β = 0.90, 95% CI = 0.43, 1.40). Previous research in this LGD population has demonstrated the cessation of livestock depredation in 91% of cases, making dog ineffectiveness unlikely to explain their lack of influence on carnivore occupancy. Our results provide the first empirical evidence based on ecological data of the capacity for LGDs to promote human-carnivore coexistence in an African agricultural context, further validating the use of specialist guarding dogs as a conservation tool of benefit to both human and wildlife populations

Activation of Ventral Tegmental Area 5-HT2C Receptors Reduces Incentive Motivation

FUNDING AND DISCLOSURE The research was funded by Wellcome Trust (WT098012) to LKH; and National Institute of Health (DK056731) and the Marilyn H. Vincent Foundation to MGM. The University of Michigan Transgenic Core facility is partially supported by the NIH-funded University of Michigan Center for Gastrointestinal Research (DK034933). The remaining authors declare no conflict of interest. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Dr Celine Cansell, Ms Raffaella Chianese and the staff of the Medical Research Facility for technical assistance. We thank Dr Vladimir Orduña for the scientific advice and technical assistance.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Eliciting a predatory response in the eastern corn snake (Pantherophis guttatus) using live and inanimate sensory stimuli: implications for managing invasive populations

North America's Eastern corn snake (Pantherophis guttatus) has been introduced to several islands throughout the Caribbean and Australasia where it poses a significant threat to native wildlife. Invasive snake control programs often involve trapping with live bait, a practice that, as well as being costly and labour intensive, raises welfare and ethical concerns. This study assessed corn snake response to live and inanimate sensory stimuli in an attempt to inform possible future trapping of the species and the development of alternative trap lures. We exposed nine individuals to sensory cues in the form of odour, visual, vibration and combined stimuli and measured the response (rate of tongue-flick [RTF]). RTF was significantly higher in odour and combined cues treatments, and there was no significant difference in RTF between live and inanimate cues during odour treatments. Our findings suggest chemical cues are of primary importance in initiating predation and that an inanimate odour stimulus, absent of simultaneous visual and vibratory cues, is a potential low-cost alternative trap lure for the control of invasive corn snake populations

River research and applications across borders

Rivers flow across national borders, unfettered by political distinctions, and the ecological health of rivers is closely linked to their degree of connectivity. River research today is more global than it has ever been, but we show that river research, engineering, and management still operate within homegrown local paradigms. As a basis for this discussion, we studied the citation networks surrounding the most widely cited papers in our field, assessing the degree to which researchers have collaborated across geographical boundaries and fully drawn from the international literature. Despite gains over time, our field remains surprisingly and pervasively provincial. The likely explanation for provincial bias is that researchers are generally more familiar and comfortable with their own research methods, sites, and agendas. However, local focus has tangible consequences. For example, contrasting paradigms and differing approaches to river restoration and to flood-risk management show that opportunities are lost when we fail to learn from the successes and failures of other regions. As Sharp and Leshner (2014; p. 579) have argued, "the search for solutions needs to draw upon the talents and innovative ideas of scientists, engineers, and societal leaders worldwide to overcome traditional and nationalistic paradigms that have so far been inadequate to meeting these challenges.

Height and risk of death among men and women: aetiological implications of associations with cardiorespiratory disease and cancer mortality

OBJECTIVES: Height is inversely associated with cardiovascular disease mortality risk and has shown variable associations with cancer incidence and mortality. The interpretation of findings from previous studies has been constrained by data limitations. Associations between height and specific causes of death were investigated in a large general population cohort of men and women from the West of Scotland. DESIGN: Prospective observational study. SETTING: Renfrew and Paisley, in the West of Scotland. SUBJECTS: 7052 men and 8354 women aged 45-64 were recruited into a study in Renfrew and Paisley, in the West of Scotland, between 1972 and 1976. Detailed assessments of cardiovascular disease risk factors, morbidity and socioeconomic circumstances were made at baseline. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Deaths during 20 years of follow up classified into specific causes. RESULTS: Over the follow up period 3347 men and 2638 women died. Height is inversely associated with all cause, coronary heart disease, stroke, and respiratory disease mortality among men and women. Adjustment for socioeconomic position and cardiovascular risk factors had little influence on these associations. Height is strongly associated with forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) and adjustment for FEV1 considerably attenuated the association between height and cardiorespiratory mortality. Smoking related cancer mortality is not associated with height. The risk of deaths from cancer unrelated to smoking tended to increase with height, particularly for haematopoietic, colorectal and prostate cancers. Stomach cancer mortality was inversely associated with height. Adjustment for socioeconomic position had little influence on these associations. CONCLUSION: Height serves partly as an indicator of socioeconomic circumstances and nutritional status in childhood and this may underlie the inverse associations between height and adulthood cardiorespiratory mortality. Much of the association between height and cardiorespiratory mortality was accounted for by lung function, which is also partly determined by exposures acting in childhood. The inverse association between height and stomach cancer mortality probably reflects Helicobacter pylori infection in childhood resulting inor being associated withshorter height. The positive associations between height and several cancers unrelated to smoking could reflect the influence of calorie intake during childhood on the risk of these cancers